scholarly journals Gender essentialism and the mental representation of transgender women and men: A multimethod investigation of stereotype content

Cognition ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 217 ◽  
pp. 104887
Author(s):  
Natalie M. Gallagher ◽  
Galen V. Bodenhausen
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie McDaniel Gallagher ◽  
Galen Von Bodenhausen

Social category systems – such as nationality, class, and gender – are constantly shifting. How are emergent social groups, which had previously not been societally recognized, mentally represented alongside more established groups? The growing visibility of transgender women and men in the US is an opportunity to observe this sort of cultural shift. Across three diverse methods of stereotype measurement, we assessed characteristics associated with transgender women and men and compared them to the stereotypes of their more traditional (cisgender) counterparts. In our final study, we directly assessed how people mentally position transgender groups relative to culturally well-established cisgender groups. Across these four studies, we show that mental representations of emergent gender groups are highly idiosyncratic, such that some participants extended same-gender-identity stereotypes to transgender groups (e.g., stereotyping transgender women as feminine), while others extended same-sex-assigned-at-birth stereotypes to transgender groups (e.g., stereotyping transgender women as masculine). Moreover, these differences were substantially explained by endorsement of gender essentialist beliefs.


2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kellen Mrkva ◽  
Luca Cian ◽  
Leaf Van Boven

Abstract Gilead et al. present a rich account of abstraction. Though the account describes several elements which influence mental representation, it is worth also delineating how feelings, such as fluency and emotion, influence mental simulation. Additionally, though past experience can sometimes make simulations more accurate and worthwhile (as Gilead et al. suggest), many systematic prediction errors persist despite substantial experience.


2001 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucia Savadori ◽  
Eraldo Nicotra ◽  
Rino Rumiati ◽  
Roberto Tamborini

The content and structure of mental representation of economic crises were studied and the flexibility of the structure in different social contexts was tested. Italian and Swiss samples (Total N = 98) were compared with respect to their judgments as to how a series of concrete examples of events representing abstract indicators were relevant symptoms of economic crisis. Mental representations were derived using a cluster procedure. Results showed that the relevance of the indicators varied as a function of national context. The growth of unemployment was judged to be by far the most important symptom of an economic crisis but the Swiss sample judged bankruptcies as more symptomatic than Italians who considered inflation, raw material prices and external accounts to be more relevant. A different clustering structure was found for the two samples: the locations of unemployment and gross domestic production indicators were the main differences in representations.


2008 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabine Krolak-Schwerdt ◽  
Margret Wintermantel ◽  
Nadine Junker ◽  
Julia Kneer

Three experiments investigated the processing of person descriptions that consisted of a number of statements about the characteristics of a person. In one condition, each statement referred to a single person attribute and in the other condition, causal and additive conjunctions to verbally link the statements were introduced. Evidence was found that the introduction of verbal links enhanced participants’ memory about the characteristics of the described person. On-line measures of processing showed that the comprehension of person information was strongly facilitated by the introduction of verbal links. Furthermore, the results were due to the introduction of causal connections between person attributes. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for models of person memory and representation.


2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 206-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Verónica Sevillano ◽  
Susan T. Fiske

Abstract. Nonhuman animals are typically excluded from the scope of social psychology. This article presents animals as social objects – targets of human social responses – overviewing the similarities and differences with human targets. The focus here is on perceiving animal species as social groups. Reflecting the two fundamental dimensions of humans’ social cognition – perceived warmth (benign or ill intent) and competence (high or low ability), proposed within the Stereotype Content Model ( Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu, 2002 ) – animal stereotypes are identified, together with associated prejudices and behavioral tendencies. In line with human intergroup threats, both realistic and symbolic threats associated with animals are reviewed. As a whole, animals appear to be social perception targets within the human sphere of influence and a valid topic for research.


2010 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 76-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Asbrock

The stereotype content model says that warmth and competence are fundamental dimensions of social judgment. This brief report analyzes the cultural stereotypes of relevant social groups in a German student sample (N = 82). In support of the model, stereotypes of 29 societal groups led to five stable clusters of differing warmth and competence evaluations. As expected, clusters cover all four possible combinations of warmth and competence. The study also reports unique findings for the German context, for example, similarities between the perceptions of Turks and other foreigners. Moreover, it points to different stereotypes of lesbians and gay men.


2014 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maya Machunsky ◽  
Thorsten Meiser

This research investigated whether relative ingroup prototypicality (i.e., the tendency to perceive one’s own ingroup as more prototypical of a superordinate category than the outgroup) can result from a prototype-based versus exemplar-based mental representation of social categories, rather than from ingroup membership per se as previously suggested by the ingroup projection model. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that a prototype-based group was perceived as more prototypical of a superordinate category than an exemplar-based group supporting the hypothesis that an intergroup context is not necessary for biased prototypicality judgments. Experiment 3 introduced an intergroup context in a minimal-group-like paradigm. The findings demonstrated that both the kind of cognitive representation and motivational processes contribute to biased prototypicality judgments in intergroup settings.


Author(s):  
Dana Ganor-Stern

Past research has shown that numbers are associated with order in time such that performance in a numerical comparison task is enhanced when number pairs appear in ascending order, when the larger number follows the smaller one. This was found in the past for the integers 1–9 ( Ben-Meir, Ganor-Stern, & Tzelgov, 2013 ; Müller & Schwarz, 2008 ). In the present study we explored whether the advantage for processing numbers in ascending order exists also for fractions and negative numbers. The results demonstrate this advantage for fraction pairs and for integer-fraction pairs. However, the opposite advantage for descending order was found for negative numbers and for positive-negative number pairs. These findings are interpreted in the context of embodied cognition approaches and current theories on the mental representation of fractions and negative numbers.


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